Sunburns Common in Young Women Who Tan Indoors

Aug. 3, 2012 -- Getting sunburned or red skin is common among college-aged women who visit tanning salons during the winter months, a new study shows.

Researchers found that nearly 1 out of every 5 sessions of indoor tanning led to a skin redness or burn in freshman and sophomore females who wanted bronzer skin tones.

"Our results show that sunburn is a common occurrence related to tanning bed use," researcher Jerod Stapleton, PhD, says in a news release. He is a behavioral scientist at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick.

For the study, researchers asked 198 female college students to keep an online diary of their indoor tanning sessions. The diaries were filed six times over a 12-week period from mid-January to late March, which are typically the most popular months for tanning bed use.

Other studies of indoor tanning have relied on people's long-term memories of the experience, but these results were based on data from recently completed diaries describing their tanning sessions in 14-day intervals.

The women attended college either in the Northeast or Southeast, and all had previously reported getting an indoor tan at least once in the last year prior to the study.

The study was published online in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine.

Getting Burned by Tanning

Three-quarters of the women did not wear any clothing during the tanning session, and nearly 39% did not wear goggles to protect their eyes.

The women reported that 1 in 5 tanning sessions resulted in red skin or sunburn.

About two-thirds of the women had at least one episode of sunburn or skin redness from an indoor tanning visit; about half reported two or more episodes, and slightly more than one-third of them reported red skin or sunburn three or more times.

Researchers also wanted to determine whether indoor tanning frequency or a woman's skin type influenced her chances of getting burned.